France: draft Digital Law overwhelmingly adopted by deputies

Axelle Lemaire can breathe freely again. As a matter of fact, the Secretary of State for Digital Affairs has something of which to be proud: her draft Digital Republic Law, which she submitted to the French Council of Ministers on 9th December, has just been adopted by the National Assembly on its first reading, Le Monde Informatique reports. This was an adoption with the support of a very large majority of deputies (= MPs) with 356 votes in favour, only 1 vote against and and 187 abstentions, as outlined on the French National Assembly website.

Although socialist deputies voted overwhelmingly for this draft law (272 voting and 2 not voting), the majority (184) of their right-wing counterparts The Republicans abstained; one voted against and only 4 in favour, including backdoors for encryption advocate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (news passim).

A proposed law put out to public consultation on the internet

The draft Digital Republic Law (PDF) hinges on three axes: stimulating the flow of data and knowledge (strengthening and expanding the opening up of public data, creating a public data service, introducing to notion of general interest data to enable its reuse by everyone and developing the knowledge economy), working for the protection of people in the digital society (stimulating an open environment by affirming network neutrality and data portability, establishing a loyalty principle for digital service platforms and introducing new rights for people in the digital world in respect of personal data and access to digital services) and finally to guarantee digital access for all (by stimulating accessibility to public digital services, access to digital services for the disabled and maintaining internet connections for the most deprived people).

This proposal for a Digital Republic Law was put out to public consultation on the internet and 5 new articles and more than 90 amendments to the draft law presented to the Council of Ministers were the direct outcome of this online consultation.